A Manipulation of Manipulation

         Okay first I would like to acknowledge that I realize Janelle told us to write on whether House of Danger should stay in the course and that could be seen as manipulation, but I am choosing to write on the topic anyway because I like it. Moving on. I’m a strong advocate that House of Danger stays in the course, actually in exactly the place it is right now, for many reasons. First of all, when I saw a children’s book on the syllabus of this class, it was very intriguing and made the class and the professor seem so much more impressive. If this class could give significance to a “choose your own adventure” book, what else could I learn from it? The main reason, however, that I feel so strongly about the continuation of this class the way it is now, is that House of Danger provides a simple frame within which to discuss manipulation. All the books we read leading up to this one all had manipulation involved within them (obviously), but because they were complicated works of art, this of course could not be the only topic discussed within them. Therefore, we seemed to circle around the topic of manipulation without ever actually pinning it down. But because House of Danger is obviously meant for children, and there are no deep and twisted literary themes within it, we were able to finally discuss manipulation itself. The style of House of Danger lends itself to this discussion but does not overtake it, like the other novels in this class leading up to it. I’m not saying that all those other discussions were terrible because we could not clearly access the point. In fact, that probably made them all the more interesting. I am saying, however, that to have all those discussions lead to a talk where we are finally able to avoid all the circles and pitfalls is perfect for this course.